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Updated: June 10, 2025
The text of this legend is cut in hieroglyphics upon a sandstone stele, with a rounded top, which was found in the temple of Khensu at Thebes, and is now preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris; it was discovered by Champollion, and removed to Paris by Prisse d'Avennes in 1846. Zeit., 1883, pp. 54-60.
Neither texts nor monuments help us to fill up the gap. The excavations of M. de Sarzec have indeed brought to light the fragments of an Assyrian stele in which a funerary scene is represented, but unfortunately its meaning is by no means clear. I cannot point to an Assyrian relief in which the same theme is treated.
The one story helped to tell the other as accurately as the fragments of an ancient stele, when put together, make up the whole inscription. The very independence of the sources from which he drew his knowledge negatived the possibility of doubt.
Many examples of this talisman are to be seen in the great Museums of Europe, and there are several fine specimens in the Third Egyptian Room in the British Museum. They are usually called "Cippi of Horus." The obverse, reverse, and two sides of the Metternich Stele have cut upon them nearly three hundred figures of gods and celestial beings.
It's shame o' mysel that gars me hate the place, mother! Ance and no more wull I stan' there, making o' 't my stele o' repentance; and syne doon the steps and awa, like Adam frae the gairden!" "And what's to come o' Eve? Are ye gaein, like him, to say, 'The wuman thoo giedest til me it was a' her wyte'?" "Ye ken weel I'm takin a' the wyte upo mysel!"
The upper scene engraved upon the stele represents Abbâ and his wife in the presence of Osiris, who is attended by Isis and Nephthys; and in the lower panel is the funeral scene, in which all the mourners with one exception are Asiatics. Certain details of the rites that are represented, and mistakes in the hieroglyphic version of the text, prove that the work is Aramaean throughout.
Attitude and treatment of robes are both Assyrian, and so is the arrangement of divine symbols in the upper field, though some of the latter are given under unfamiliar forms. The king's close-fitting peaked cap was evidently the royal headdress of Sam'al; see the royal figure on a smaller stele of inferior design, op. cit., pl. lxvi. Op. cit. pp. 257, 346 ff., and pl. lx.
In reference to this most interesting stele of Narâm-Sin we may here mention another inscription of this king, found quite recently at Susa and published only this year, which throws additional light on Narâm-Sin's allies and on the empire which he and his father Sargon founded.
But more instructive than these borrowed memorials is a genuine example of Phoenician work, the stele set up by Yehaw-milk, king of Byblos, and dating from the fourth or fifth century B.C. In the sculptured panel at the head of the stele the king is represented in the Persian dress of the period standing in the presence of 'Ashtart or Astarte, his "Lady, Mistress of Byblos". There is no doubt that the stele is of native workmanship, but the influence of Egypt may be seen in the technique of the carving, in the winged disk above the figures, and still more in the representation of the goddess in her character as the Egyptian Hathor, with disk and horns, vulture head-dress and papyrus-sceptre.
On his stele which is preserved at Constantinople, Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, who himself suffered defeat at the hands of Cyrus, King of Persia, ascribed the fall of Nineveh to the anger of Marduk and the other gods of Babylon because of the destruction of their city and the spoliation of their temples by Sennacherib in 689 B.C. We see the irony of fate in the fact that Cyrus also ascribed the defeat and deposition of Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon to Marduk's intervention, whose anger he alleges was aroused by the attempt of Nabonidus to concentrate the worship of the local city-gods in Babylon.
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